YouTube To Let Videos Earn Revenue During Copyright Disputes

In principle, YouTube is a very simple service. You have a camera and something to say, show or do and you can record it and upload it for the world to see. If enough people like your style of videos, then you have the real ability to generate revenue from the service. Essentially, offering anyone the ability to become a YouTuber and profit from it. However, like most things where money and creativity are concerned, such a combination can lead to issues of copyright and recently, YouTube, more specifically YouTube channels and content providers, have been the subject of a number of copyright cases.

In fact, back in February, YouTube announced that they were introducing a new team which is largely purpose-designed to improve the copyright claim procedure and deal better with the number of false claims that arise. Which can be quite detrimental to the revenue of channels as it is common practice for YouTube to suspend revenue-generation while a copyright dispute is being processed. Today, YouTube has released another post specifically on this topic and how they plan to help better deal with the issue of revenue during dispute periods.

The Content ID dispute process can be lengthy one and to avoid anyone wrongfully not generating the revenue they deserve, YouTube has confirmed that they will now allow ads to continue to be displayed on videos during the Content ID dispute process. However, YouTube also confirms that the revenue generated during this period will essentially be held in escrow until the outcome of the dispute has been determined. At which point, the person or party who has won the dispute and deemed to be the owner of the material will receive the backdated revenues. While this won’t be an ideal solution to the problem, as there is still likely to be a length gap between revenues-generated and funds received, it does seem to be a fair way to deal with the issue at hand and at the very least, does look to guarantee that revenues are not completely lost, which was the case before. For those that might be affected by this change, unfortunately, YouTube has not provided firm details on when the change will begin and instead simply states they are “working on this new system now and hope to roll it out to all YouTube partners in the coming months.”

John has been writing about and reviewing tech products since 2014 after making the transition from writing about and reviewing airlines. With a background in Psychology, John has a particular interest in the science and future of the industry. Besides adopting the Managing Editor role at AH John also covers much of the news surrounding audio and visual tech, including cord-cutting, the state of Pay-TV, and Android TV. Contact him at [email protected]